


Animal Crossing X Primer

by thenewdarling



Category: Primer (2004), どうぶつの森 | Animal Crossing Series
Genre: Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23558611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenewdarling/pseuds/thenewdarling
Summary: The world of Animal Crossing, with the plot of Primer. Because I'll never get tired of laughing at Primer.Created for Glasgow Fan-Fic Open Mic Night April 2020Small note, I haven't actually seen Primer since like 2005 and I sacrificed a non-zero number of hours reminding myself of stuff about it for these jokes, and I don't want that sacrifice to go without mention.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Animal Crossing X Primer

Here's what's going to happen.  
I'm going to read this,  
and you're going to listen,  
and you're going to stay on the line.  
You're not going to interrupt, you're not going to speak for any reason.  
Some of this you know.  
I'm going to start at the top of the page.

Names have been redacted to protect the innocent.

**Thursday 26th March, 9:39am  
[REDACTED Island]  
Turnip price, 93 Bells**

I step out of my house and pull out my fishing rod. Just another day in paradise. A present flows past on the breeze - no one knows where they come from. I switch to my slingshot and shoot it down.

Wooden end table.

Impressive they made it float on a single balloon. I start making my way towards Nook's for the morning, when I hear someone running around.

I see out of the corner of my eye, a person running. Another villager - but none of the other villagers run. I'm sure I didn't open the gates... Damn... did that bunny come early? But no. It looked like a human.

I shrug it off, the pleasant diagetic music lulling me back to calm, and think nothing of it.

**Wednesday 1st April, 11:42am  
[REDACTED] Island  
Turnip price, 107 Bells**

I step back from the crafting table, amazed at my work.

I will refer to the box currently on the crafting table as The First Box.

I don't know what to do with it. It was supposed to suspend gravity - so you could build things floating in the air, shorten the gap between us and Minecraft. I used what I could work out of how the floating present balloons work to do it.

But I put a cedar sapling inside it and it came out a full blown tree. I do the little Reaction Emote where my eyes go wide and an exclamation mark pops up over my head. I need to tell someone about this.

**Wednesday 1st April, 8:03pm  
[REDACTED] Island  
Turnip price, 109 Bells**

Tom Nook, Isabelle and I eat Bunny Day sky eggs and stone eggs in the Resident Services. Isabelle complains about a noise in the ceiling, citing rats. I'm not sure how rats exist alongside the several rat-based villagers in our town.

Any following dialogue has been translated into English from the original Animalese.

I wait until Isabelle has gone to do yoga in the plaza with Hornsby, and I explain to him about the box.

"But if I'm bending space to bend gravity is it possible I've created some kind of recursive loop in which time bends backwards?" I technobabble to Nook.

"Yes yes, and the inside of the box experiences reality within a relative state of flux, hmm?" Tom Nook said.

"The object in the box will travel backwards through time for as long as the box was turned on."

We continued to talk like this for some hours, explaining nothing - the Internet would talk about the contents of our conversation for many years.

Tom Nook drew a diagram on a piece of paper - his handwriting was terrible.

"Do you think you could fit a person inside it, yes yes?"

I ponder this. Little do I know this is not the first time Tom Nook has had this conversation with me.

**Wednesday 2nd April, 5:05 pm  
[REDACTED] Island  
Turnip price, 56 Bells**

I ask Tom Nook to meet me outside the museum. We both wear very boring white office shirts and slacks. He approaches, "Why are you making us meet now, I still have work to do, yes yes?"

"Quiet, quiet!" And I pass him my binoculars.

He lifts them up and I point him towards -

Me, walking along the river and into the museum, about to get into The First Box that I stashed behind the Tyrannosaurus. I've locked myself in the house all day so that I don't run into myself.

"How did- how did you-? You did it..."

"I lived the full day, used the box behind the Tyrannosaurus to travel back to this morning and once I knew it worked, I came to get you."

"This is.. unbelievable. Yes yes."

What I didn't tell Nook, was that I had also created a box which we will hereby refer to as the Failsafe Box. This one I stashed in my own house. The Failsafe Box was turned on before the regular box, which means that if I ever needed to - I could go back to the very beginning and sabotage the First Box, which would convince Past Me that time travel is impossible.

**Thursday 3rd April, 3:03pm  
[REDACTED] Island  
Turnip price, 101 Bells**

The plan went like this.

Tom Nook and I would self-isolate within a second home I created using my sister's Nintendo Switch account knowing that she would never actually play the game. No one would look in there, we could never run into ourselves. And then we would wait. And watch the turnip prices.

The second they skyrocketed, we would know to go back and invest our Bells in turnips that week. We would get in the box, and we would ride it back to the beginning of that week, and buy up the turnips. Timmy and Tommy never thought anything of it.

We had initially tried putting the turnips in the box but they would rot like some kind of God had decided that turnips and time travel didn't work.

We did it a few times, making stacks of Bells every time.

On the third time, Nook's NookPhone rang.

"You didn't turn your phone off."

"I must have forgot, yes yes."

"What does that even mean? If your past self's phone was supposed to ring, is it still ringing out there?"

He turned the phone off.

"Should we stop now? We've made more Bells than we could ever spend," I said.

"You're probably right."

There was a scratching noise in the ceiling.

"Rats in here as well?"

Tom Nook pulled a ladder out of his inventory, and climbed up. "Oh God..."

Hooked up to one of the oxygen tanks that we used inside of the boxes, was another me.

"What happened?"

"I don't know."

"Why would you have done this?"

"I don't know!"

"Well think, hmm?" Tom Nook said. "It must be a you from the far future doing this to you in your near future."

The little cold wind Reaction Emote blew.

"This is getting too much... I'm gonna go." I knew at that point, I had to use the Failsafe Box to undo everything.

"Wait!" Nook said, turning, and an earphone fell from his ear. It was playing back a conversation we haven't had yet.

___

I run, and I make it back to my own house, shutting the door behind me. I climb up into my attic, to where I stashed the failsafe box behind a Regal Cupboard.

But it's not there. Someone found the Failsafe Box and took it.

I turn and see Tom Nook. But it's not the Tom Nook I was with a second ago.

"You took the box."

"No, not yet. But I knew you'd be here right now." And he rushes me with the oxygen.

**Saturday 5th April, 3:03pm  
** [REDACTED] Island  
Turnip price, 101 Bells 

At this point there are three Nooks and two of me, plus another two versions of me which are implied but are never on-screen. I'm holding an axe at Nook's head. "Stop, stop ok! We just have to stop and think, this is getting ridiculous!"

"It's only going to get more ridiculous, don't you see, hmm?"

"Wha... what do you mean?" My ear starts to bleed.

"Where do you think the turnips come from?"

"What?"

"Who sets the prices? What do Timmy and Tommy do with them if they're buying them on a Saturday afternoon and they're going to rot in a few hours?"

"... the balloons."

I remember, in one timeline, offscreen, a balloon dropped an axe at my feet right when I needed to cut down a tree, to get access to a box which we will from now refer to as the Tree Box.

"The time machine isn't based on the balloons. The balloons are based on the time machine. I'm the one that drops the balloons."

"And I. Make. The towns."

The door opens behind Nook. Another Nook stands in the doorway. That Nook speaks. "Infinite villagers. Infinite villages, with infinite Tom Nooks. All the way down."

The door opens behind me. Timmy and Tommy. Timmy stepped forward. "You never saw us being born. We're you, Tom. Created by a box which could go back to your childhood which we will heretoforth refer to as the Baby Box."

"...refer to as the baby box." Tommy echoed.

And it was at that point the second phase of the plan began. With infinite islands, coordination between villagers who had different turnip prices, we could...

**TRANSMISSION ENDS**


End file.
